Sunday, April 19, 2015

On why the cow should be worshipped

[Disclaimer: I'm too lazy to provide citations for every little "fact" I have inserted into this "story". To the best of my knowledge, the various facts cited in this story are true - but there might be minor errors. Do feel free to point them out to me. If there are howlers, I will make the necessary corrections quickly. For 'meh' errors, I'll probably wait for another saturday night when I have time to kill beside my laptop.]

The story starts several thousands of years ago in the last ice age in Siberia - when lowered sea levels allowed a group of hunter gatherers to diffuse into North America over a land bridge between present day Russia and America.

And in America they found a pristine land which no great-ape descendant had ever set eyes on. A pristine land teeming with ice-age megafauna - sabre toothed cats, giant sloths, mammoths, mastodons, dire wolves, massive American lions and several other species extinct / surviving in the modern era.

They hunted game using sophisticated stone age tools. Game included bison and the occasional mammoth. And when the ice age concluded and the climate turned the corner (and the current holocene epoch began), these Native Americans, just like their Eurasian counterparts invented farming (independently). They invented (through selective breeding) corn, potato, tomato, chillies, squashes and tobacco. Where they differed from their Eurasian counterparts was that they were not in a position to domesticate animals - the llama is the only beast of burden indigenous to the Americas which lends itself to domestication. And as beasts of burden go, the llama isn't exactly an over-achiever. They can't pull chariots like horses and elephants and bullocks can. They can only carry a small amount of weight (and the Incas did exploit this capability).

In this respect, the Eurasians did have a considerable advantage, viz. the Aurochs - the ancestor of the modern cow. On domesticating the aurochs independently in Europe and the sub-continent, humans were able to secure a resource which provided milk to nourish them (as a matter of fact, they rapidly evolved the ability to digest this milk - indicating exactly how advantageous this domestication was to them). A resource which provided a concentrated source of protein through its meat. A resource that provided humans with leather to protect them from the cold - and a resource that helped them till their fields to improve agricultural productivity.

Just like their Eurasian counterparts, the Native Americans built a sophisticated civilization. Their civilization, at its peak, had more people than Europe did. They performed magnificent feats of architecture all over the continent(just like their Eurasian cousins did in Egypt, Mesopotamia and in the Indus valley). They also invented an effective (albeit rudimentary) form of democracy (the Iruquois Confederacy) - which incidentally motivated Benjamin Franklin to propose the idea of a 'union of states' for a nation he would help found. However, since they did not have a beast of burden worth the mention, they did not find much of use for the wheel (other than in children's toys). The Inca highway, for instance, had stairs - which is ideally suited for llamas - which can't pull carriages.

Due to an accident of history, at the turn of the 15th century, the Europeans had a significant lead over the rest of the world in a couple of respects: Armed warfare and ability of travel long distances at sea (with said arms, and beasts of burden of equine ancestry).And they decided to use these leads to cynically exploit the world economically. And thus began the slow, humiliating and destructive process of colonizing the planet.

Almost immediately after the landing of Columbus on the soil of the new world, the wholesale destruction of indigenous America started. The Eurpoeans, with their superior guns treated American natives with disdain - laying waste to towns they invaded. And in this effort they had trillions of invisible allies - the germs. European germs (which were not lethal to europeans due to their coexistence with domestic anmials (specifically the cow)) killed 19 of 20 native Americans they infected.

This unfortunate de-peopling of North America created a vaccum - which the Eurpoeans were more than happy to fill (and even accelerate - as a study of the brutal and racist history of North America shows - from the shoehorning by lethal force of proud tribesmen into "reservations" to smallpox blankets - to forced conversions to the fundamentalist religion of the conquerors). This resulted in America becoming a (primarily) settler colony.

Contrast that with the story of India. Despite centuries of British colonialism (which cyncially exploited India and kept its economy repressed), India is primarily ethnically south-asian. The question of converting India to a settler colony never arose - because European germs had met their match (and then some) in India.

And for this, credit must go to that proud descendant of Bos primigenius namadicus, the Zebu cattle (along with other domesticated animals of India) the coexistence of which with Indians allowed the Indian microbiome resist the European Invasion - without a genocide (though the Brits did manage some success at that through cynical and racist mismanagement of famines and the partition).

Long story short: the reason why India isn't a settler colony like North America is - is the cow. The cow is the reason I exist. And if I thought that worshipping and praying made a damn difference (they don't) I'd worship the cow too.